Frozen Toothpaste

Before we begin, you should know that I have long harbored some affection for Ralph Nader. In 2004, when I was just starting to get seriously interested in politics, I saw him speak. Nader seemed to me to be the best candidate for President. He cared about and talked about issues that the other two well-known candidates weren’t. For further illustration of my enamorment (the best made-up word yet actually, that appears to be a word), notice the rhetoric of the two major parties being equally bad in this letter. That’s exactly like Nader.

To explain its title, the documentary begins with a quote from George Bernard Shaw:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

In these two sentences, the film’s thesis is clear: Mr. Nader is both unreasonable and, more importantly, progressive. As the filmmakers tell the story, Ralph Nader is not unlike Frank Capra’s Jefferson Smith come to life: an idealistic reformer unwilling to yield to the status quo.

On the possibility that Mr. Nader was a misguided reformer, the film is ominously silent. There are no memorable opponents to his landmark reforms of the 1960s and 1970s shown on the screen. The only opponents the filmmakers do show seem rather absurd anyway.

The most memorable opponent, and also most likely to lead us to like Mr. Nader, is the misguided men of GM. During the years that Nader crusaded for safety reforms for cars, they had him tailed by both private eyes and seducers. And not only did they not get any dirt they could use in a smear campaign, they were also embarrassed publicly and forced to pay damages of almost half a million dollars.

Throughout, the film shows Mr. Nader to be a hardworking man doing what he thinks is best, and with a group of young and reverent helpers. The notable exception is the great deal of screen time given to two men convinced that Mr. Nader’s run for President in 2000 and 2004 was not only the cause of the Democratic candidates’ defeat, but also the insane plans of an egomaniac.

In the end I have the feeling that this movie may be disliked by some. The conclusion that at least I took away from the film was that there is a very really possibility that Ralph Nader is, as Bill Murray said during his 2000 campaign, “the best American I know.”

Whether or not you agree with that statement, or are at least willing to let the film try to sway you to that conclusion, will probably determine how you feel about the film. I, for one, think everyone should give it a chance.

A REtroVIEW (or simply retroview) is an idea I have been kicking around for some time. It is, at the lowest-level, a review of something old.

More importantly, it is a review of something old which has long-standing personal importance. That is, it’s a review of a book you always loved, a movie you always hated, or a thing that scared you when you were seven years old.

What makes the composition of a retroview different from that of a review is that a retroview both acknowledges and utilizes the personal meaning of the object in question.

Where in a review you are to make a judgment on the value of the work alone: how it exists in itself, without any attached emotional or personal significance; in a retroview you are freed from any such pretension. By acknowledging upfront that you have prejudices about the material, you are freer to discuss it honestly and less likely to come off sounding unjust.

Personally, one of the first books that I ever really loved intensely was The Little Prince. And as a blogger I may want to bring attention to said book by reviewing it, despite its age. Thus, I can write a retroview about the book acknowledging, both implicitly in my header and explicitly in my text, it’s past and continuing significance for me.

Retroviews are often done, but without acknowledgment of this inherent nostalgia. They are usually given other, but less useful, guises: as reviews of the new DVD release or the 40th anniversary edition. I’m not accusing such labellings of dishonesty, but rather an extreme lack of creativity in its titles.

If you doubt the substantial biases of retroviews, look at any reviews written of Citizen Kane, or a similarly old movie, written in recent time. You will certainly find in these reviews an undue tenderness for the review’s subject. One that is perhaps undue and certainly different from an initial or more immediate reaction to such a film.

Citizen Kane got notoriously bad reviews (especially, but not exclusively, from the papers of William Randolph Hearst) when it was released in 1941. Orsen Welles, the boy genius, had failed to live up to his own hype.

Yet reviewing this movie today no one, not even one working at a former Hearst newspaper, would dare to say a single bad thing about it. It would be bad for their reputation as a critic (the consensus is too well established), and to their fond memories of their first discovery of the film.

So whether or not you chose to use this moniker on your own REtroVIEWs is your own decision. But for me, that’s what they’ll always be.

And do expect the first one to come soon.

We were about to watch The Departed. “This is a great excuse to review something,” I said to myself. And so that’s what I was going to do.

But when it was over I said to myself, “What am I supposed to write?”

The movie is too recent for it to be socially acceptable to spoil the ending. To do that I would say we have to wait at least two years after theatrical release. And that’s only the special exception that you make for your friend who has to tell you how the movie goes because otherwise you just can’t make her stop talking about it.

But without being able to discuss intimate plot details, all I’ve got is a superficial discussion of the movies “tautness” and how “well-acted” it is. I suppose such reviews don’t feel so awkward and out of place before the majority of the country is convinced that it is a good movie, but afterward they ring hollow.

To use a metaphor not too out of place in the context of this review, it’s as if I’m arriving at the funeral and pronouncing the man dead. There’s already a consensus on this topic, and restating it would give no one any benefit.

Perhaps I could disagree heartily with the consensus. That consensus, to quote Rotten Tomatoes is that:

The Departed is a thoroughly engrossing gangster drama with the gritty authenticity and soupy morality that has infused director Martin Scorcese’s past triumphs. Featuring outstanding work from an excellent cast that includes Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon, some critics say the film even tops its source material (the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs). The Departed marks a triumphant return to form for Scorsese; it’s his best-reviewed film since GoodFellas.

But to disagree with that is to fundamentally go against my personal opinion. Surely some aspects of that statement are far beyond anything I would think to say on the issue.

The fact that it was an adaptation: completely lost on me. As good as GoodFellas? Been a long time since I saw that one.

But in general I do agree with it. I might add that I was shocked when, at two hours in, I realized I hadn’t realized I was two hours into a 150 minute movie.

Thus, my review comes down to this single sentence. And though this sentence lashes the flourishes or typical reviews, it gets the job done.

And so finally, here is my review: This is good.